Songbird's Reply
by PhaerynTao
Summary: Like sand, she slipped from my fingers as I had planned. And in her wake, she left a gift I couldn't decide whether or not to mock. Companion piece to 'Callings'


Merry Christmas everyone, and surprise. XD Although I'm sure the majority of this fandom hasn't noticed, I haven't been around for a while. Message me if you want the full and boring update of why I was gone so long. Well here I am, out of the blue, on Christmas day. For the past few months I've juggled ideas around so much that I just said screw it and left them all to rot. Writer's block is a bad affliction, blech. And what do I do with my sudden resurrection? I do a companion piece on something I've already written, which you _might _want to read before this, otherwise you wont understand anything. XD So original, huh? Anyways…enjoy, hopefully. And please don't crap a brick from the implied femslash, it's not the basis of the story. And sorry for any typos; I'll catch them later.

Don't own 'dem Hawks.

-0-

My white blood cell count was so low, and yet there I stood on the balcony watching the sun come up, breathing deeply, and slowly, doubtlessly sucking in all the airborne diseases a normal human body could fight off with ease. I knew I didn't have much time left, and I was beyond reviling that fact. Instead I watched the sky bleed and ooze, much like my infected blood as the sun ascended. Now that I was humbled by my illness and other circumstances, it was easy to imagine a powerful god in the face of that rising star, tauntingly showing himself to the world he held in the palm of one of his scaly hands and deciding who would live and who would die today. My stomach lurched, either from the thought or my muscles struggling to pump blood properly through my arteries; why he had allowed me to stay alive this long. Maybe I was looking at it incorrectly. This was possibly my punishment, the price to pay for being born into a sovereignty built on taking other people's lives away and following its path without a toe beyond the line like a faithful dog. Kiros was admittedly a putrid place, and quite inhospitable to mass collections of life. The plants were poisonous and deadly, whether they were ingested or simply brushed against, hostile and primitive in order to survive the noxious fumes of the tar pits. The mansion was high enough from the inhalants so it didn't affect us as much, and on top of that the force field generator ingeniously manufactured by Piper was more than enough to keep the junk away from my already fragile lungs.

My left eye twitched as a ray of sunlight blinded my retina. The gamma rays were mocking me; tantalizing the promise of a brand new day filled with possibilities and miracles. Yes, a miracle was going to take place on this fateful day, but my thoughts were not grateful on the matter. A breeze carrying a shoddy wind blew in my face, and I finally shielded my face away from the sun that I had the so-called opportunity to witness. My hand went from my sunken eyes to my bald skull, now missing every last violet-black strand of hair, all the way back to my neck where the tubes of the chamber once embedded themselves in my Medulla Oblongata, feeding me, pumping my body with chemicals and additives to wipe out the defected cellular population. Ever since I was a teenager I had battles waging inside of me of microscopic proportions. There was always a refuel of the soldiers, and then another massacre would take place, leaving a raw field of death its wake, and a total collapse of my body functions, rendering me physically useless and no more than a mumbling drooling vegetable. But now...and I listlessly grinned at the thought, there was nothing but genocide under my skin. The last of my strength was waning quickly despite three months in the Medullary Function Enhancer chamber, and I welcomed it so immensely that it almost scared me. I was tired of fighting this disease; no, that was an understatement. Although I would never admit it, because Piper would retch and explode if I discussed my feelings on the matter as openly as I wished to, the urge to kill myself was becoming deafening, and simply unbearable. The fact that I didn't have a knife slicing my throat open, spilling my dirty infected blood onto the priceless wooden floor of my room, was nothing short of a phenomenon.

I was death itself; the walking deceased. My hobble eventually stabilized with a cane, and then I needed a walking stick three feet taller than I was so I could hold myself upright. Even then I gripped the staff, so smoothly and perfectly crafted, carved by the gentlest and deftest of chocolate colored hands. The sun was up, a raging fiery silver dollar just an inch and a half above the horizon, and I turned away from it completely. Sound traveled through the mansion with ease; I could hear Piper in her room, languidly ransacking her room and wiping it clean, trying to leave no trace, trying to diminish the ache that was indefinitely locked up and growing like a leeching sponge within her chest. As I walked with the legs of a ninety year old woman towards the ajar door of my room, I walked passed a mirror, the one and only in the mansion. After we emerged from the chamber together, it took days to collect ourselves, and in that time I asked her to put up a small mirror. I remember dismissing her from her lessons, with weak croaked objections on her part, and looking into that mirror during the hours while she slept normally without any chemicals suppressing her brain waves. I traced the gaunt curves of my angular face, looking starved, numbly reflecting how young and malevolently sultry I used to be. I had plucked out the last strands of my hair, and ran my hands repeatedly over the smooth papery skin of my scalp riddled with twisting railroads of blue veins.

Strangely enough, even then, I could not bring myself to trash my appearance. I was beautiful, I was hideous, and I was evidence that there were some people out there who were more desperate, calculating, manipulative, and insane than I was. The only reason I wasn't dead yet was because of Piper's care, her touch, her harsh words whenever I refused to give heed to my constantly thinning health. It was because of her obsessive guardianship that I was alive; and it depended on my mood whether to feel thankful or bitter about that. My head curved straight and away from my foul features. I meandered my way down the hallway, the floorboards creaking underneath my cold bare feet, to Piper's room. She sat on her bed with crammed knapsacks and stuffed duffel bags surrounding her like a small fortress, those coffee hands folded uselessly in her lap. I took a closer look, and saw crystal droplets falling onto those hands. My upper lip curled; although she had good reason to, I didn't want her to shed tears over this. One of my hands let go of my walking stick and knocked on the side of the entryway. As she swiftly turned to look at me, it took a little bit of my strength not to turn away from such splendor. I suppose I should count myself guilty and ashamed that I always found people so much more beautiful when they were crying and in pain. Her dark cheeks glistened with tears, tears that fell from wide eyes holding hints of fear and betrayal, the hue of the vengeful sun.

I pretended not to take notice to her crying, instead passively looking at her luggage, the bags stuffed to their fullest capacity, and glancing at the empty walls once covered with parchment with scribbled notes from my lectures. Raising an eyebrow, I opened my mouth, and masked facetious words spilled forth.

"I see you're already packed."

Her fists tightened, but she nodded silently, calmly.

"I don't remember you having so many belongings in the first place." Goodness, I was the best at making things worse.

She still said nothing, but her eyes were closed tight and failing at stopping another flow of tears from escaping her lids. She even sewed her lips shut. Her reaction to my glibness was stunning, and I immediately stopped. I couldn't find it in me to open my mouth again for several minutes; she was hurting. In her eyes, I had torn her heart out and feasted, blowing her kisses with my bloodstained lips. I grimaced; was this guilt? Such a hideous emotion…I was rarely apologetic for my behavior, but for some reason this was different. Even if I was averse to admit it, Piper had filled every cliché female role in my life. She became my mother, my nurse, my sister, and my friend. She changed my soiled clothes, laughed at my dirty snide jokes, and saw me when I was at my lowest. I couldn't even count the times her lips had pressed themselves against my sweaty pallid forehead, when she thought I wouldn't notice because I pretended to be unconscious.

One of my long bony fingers came up to my lips to plug them. Cursed vomit; creeping up my throat whenever the neoplasm strangled my brain or when I thought about those hands running through ragged clumps of hair I no longer had.

I was…sorry.

So incredibly sorry.

"You're almost ready to leave." I said without any bite in my voice. It was time to be tender.

She starkly brushed that gleaming moisture off her face, the kind that made her look like a scorned angel weeping over her exile, and stood. She walked passed me, leaving a demonic and cruel space between us that held nothing but asphyxiating tension.

"I-I forgot something in the lab." Piper stuttered. I hated when her voice trembled.

She disappeared down the hallway and flew down the mahogany staircase.

Not only was I annoyed by the fact that I couldn't follow her down the stairs due to my awful legs, but I was left with my own feelings becoming more rigorous and burning by the second. Without her face, her tears, her words, and her aura seeping dejection to feed and focus on, I was left by myself. Oh it was amazing how much I had weakened; four years ago I would have been able to hurry after her. Maybe not with a speed that rivaled hers, but never was I so disabled that I saw a flight of stairs as a grand enemy. Once again, sounds of rummaging disturbed the dusty solitude of the mansion. She was probably taking everything in the lab for herself. Long ago I would have felt resentful towards such looting, but now I secretly encouraged it. I wanted her to take all of it, all that she had learned from me. That's why she kept me here and alive in the first place. I wanted her to use it, to utilize it, to show off her engraved and polished genius. My hands were useless; shaky and weak. I couldn't refine a crystal even if I had the drive I did when I was a youngster. I didn't need any of that junk anymore.

I didn't mind being left with nothing.

I didn't.

Discontent with my limitations, naturally I tried to overcome them, scornfully moving down the stairs slower than a snail trapped in molasses. I gripped my stick as tightly as I could with one hand while the other held the railing, although it was futile, for if I did fall, there wouldn't be any strength in my arms to save me from the plummet. My thin pale lips smiled at the irony; Master Cyclonis, now Lark, struggling to conquer something as minimal as a staircase. I was about fifteen feet away from the bottom and amusedly mortified at the excitement I felt when I saw the last step, when Piper emerged from the lab down the first floor hallway. Her upper lip tensed in shock, and she immediately shrieked at me.

"What the _hell _do you think you're doing?!"

I just stared at her, surprised at how much I had missed her motherly nagging. I didn't retort back like I normally would, but instead I smirked in slight satisfaction.

She stomped over and climbed up to where I was on the stairs. Taking my walking stick from my grasp, she threw one of my arms over her shoulder and one of her arms around my torso.

"Dear god, do you want to end up breaking your neck?" She hissed in my ear, instantly irritated as I emitted a dark chuckle. For growing up with a gang of rambunctious teenage boys, you'd think she'd have a better sense of humor.

"Not that I really care what happens to my neck, but I figured I'd help you gather some of your belongings." I said calmly, my lips betraying my urge to burst out into a series of sinister chortle. "You've always worked far too hard, from cleaning up my stained sheets to staying up until the early hours of the morning doing your studies. I could at least get off my ass and help you out once."

Piper stopped abruptly and made me look at her goaded expression. Actually…she looked beyond goaded. Downright pissed was far more appropriate. _She must have learned that look from me…_I thought offhandedly, tilting my head a little.

"I don't understand how you can talk like this right now." She said venomously.

I remained outwardly unreadable. "We've been through this; there are many things neither of us understands about each other."

Gruffly, we came to the last step and she handed me back my stick. I leaned on it thoughtfully, and looked at how frayed, angry, and dismissed she seemed. Sometimes I really wondered if I did have a conscience or a heart at all. I ached in that spot sometimes, like earlier when she left my room in a frazzled hurry, but times like right now, I could only gaze at her, my handiwork, my apprentice, my…

My…

People always look absolutely striking when they're in pain. Piper was so gorgeous when she was angry. She glared at me, all the while shaking her head faintly as if she couldn't believe how divinely unstable and disgusting the creature before her was. Couldn't say that I blamed her, really.

"Five years I've worked under you, Cyclonis."

Oh, so we're back to _that _name, are we?

"Five years, and I've come to see you as more than a teacher, and for some strange reason I still don't get even a friend. I cared for you for all that time, and now…now you're making me leave you forever."

That sounded about right. Brilliant, Sherlock. Sarcasm was one of the things that kept me on an invisible pedestal, away from her insults and truthful insinuations, but it was becoming harder and harder to ignore that spiteful tone she was using.

"And…and I slept with you in the pod…" Her throat was seizing up, and even from there I could smell salt water brewing from behind her eyes. "All that darkness…I had never felt so alone in my entire life, but I could still feel your hand…"

I could feel hers as well. That was beside the point, however. My scheming intellect, about the only thing about me that hadn't vastly corroded, was quickly deducing and searching out the point she was trying to make. Usually I wouldn't bother; Piper was an emotional and volatile woman, and a lot of things she did really didn't make very much sense. But perhaps now…I was starting to wonder if she was about to say what I thought she would.

I started to wonder if she was about to say what I expected her to say, after all of these years, witnessing each other's weaknesses first hand and soothing them with one another's different version of consolation.

…What I wanted her to say.

In certain areas, I was filled with expectations. I once expected things like reports filed and reconnaissance work to be taken care of, my medicine to be brewed and mixed properly, genocides on certain Terras to be carried out exactly the way I demanded them to be. When dealing with trust, friendship, and…dare I say it, _think _it, love, my feet burned on uncharted embers and my mind frowned on the unfamiliarity. So many years of being cared for, of being so highly esteemed had left me open to trusting such trivial and vengeful regions, perhaps leaving room to expect endowments from them as well.

"It seems like you don't even care that I'm leaving." She said wistfully, cutting through my thoughts like a dull, painful ghost blade.

I considered my words for a moment. She probably thought my pause had proved her assumption. Accompanied with a humorless laugh, I said, "Your illogical emotions have rubbed off onto me."

Her eyes turned downward. I didn't seem to back off the jesting, even as she was feeling so depleted.

So I sighed, allowing myself to be brutally tender, and brutally honest. "Piper, in the time I've truly gotten to know you, I've learned that you're an obsessive loon hell bent on attaining your goals and dreams. You're rather moronic when it comes to your emotions and priorities as well."

She looked hurt by my honesty. I should've added 'sensitive' to the list too.

"I'm tempted to be insulted that you think because I want you gone that I don't care about you. If you had it your way, you would stay here until I croaked, wasting away like me."

"I want you out of here, away from this oppressive place, away from your roost. I'm not inclined to play the part of the protective master hesitant to let her student go out into the big wide world. I was never one to follow clichés."

I inwardly cringed at all of this divulging. "You could probably argue that I was pushed off of my comfortable perch and look what happened to me. But there's an obvious difference; I was trained to use crystals to kill people, ruin their lives. You've been raised to help them, to aid them with your gifts."

Back to being aloof, I turned to the side, leaning one cheek on my walking stick. "You just needed to hone your skills, to be refined, and that is all. But the student surpassed the master from the beginning; and I'm almost bothered by how long it took you to realize that."

She was quiet now. I glanced at her, and she was staring at me with shining eyes, glinting with something not malicious, not sinister, or even mischievous. It was a loving spark, and I hated that. I may not be foaming at the mouth for the blood of the innocent anymore, but my soul was still far too dark to handle such sentiments. I shook my head, and waved her off. The eighteen years of a royal life cancelled out the five I spent living like a middle class citizen, and I was still quite used to people doing what I told of them.

"Pack the rest of your things. I want you gone in three hours."

More rummaging, more tension, more passive wandering and pointless musings.

The sun was high in the air now, blistering my skin. Despite having no standing in what I did anymore, Piper would have a fit if she found me in the hanger, which I spent the three hours I gave her wasting my strength to go, but I could still be sneaky and evasive as ever, so she wouldn't catch me for another short while. I held my fabled black-purple cloak to my chest over my thigh-length black shorts and the thin flimsy fabric of a grubby tank top, letting the sunshine hit my stark white shoulders just begging to be burned. Behind me, her heliscooter was packed on both sides, a mechanical packiderm holding five years worth of plans, notes, experiments, and equipment. I smiled reflectively at such gatherings; had it really been that long? Piper was…an interesting addition to my life. The time we spent together left me feeling not exactly torn up, but not completely enlightened to my true feelings for her. When she bombarded my senses with her emotions and passions, I became a mixture of uncertainty, distress, and most importantly fascination. She made me feel things that seemed forbidden and painful, things that disturbed my already wretched body and made my stomach clench laboriously without an urge to throw up.

I heard a growl behind me. Piper had arrived, and her blazing gaze told me to get the hell away from the sunlight and into the shade. She was more of an old hag than I was, and I was the one who was dying. I obeyed, leering delicately at her of course as I came to join her in the dimmer part of the hanger. A backpack hung over one of her arms and in the other was a tied fabric sack filled with something I couldn't make out, nor did I bother to speculate at the time. She suddenly raised her arm, extending the sack towards me.

I took it with an anemic grasp. "What is it?"

"Some of that herb that you like to smoke so much." She said simply, not blinking and not taking her eyes off of me for an instant. I secretly felt affronted; only I had the privilege to deliver such intensity in a single glower. The sack was far too heavy to only contain the herb, but I would delve into that later. Right now, my apprentice stood in front of me, all grown up and cultured, ragged and filled with insane ideas that would undeniably work every time because she was so ingenious, sad, betrayed, and possibly in love.

There were no mirrors in here, so I had to use my hands to remind myself of what I looked like. Again, I ran my hands over my face to feel my boney face, and then to my hairless skull with only a thin layer of batwing skin separating it from the surface. Under my clothes there was no flesh, only a skeleton with a milky chalk-white covering. And yet she looked at me like I was the world to her. And no matter how much I tried to convince her otherwise, she wouldn't listen. All signs pointed to that outlandish unhinged word, 'love'. I was becoming more convinced.

"I'm going to get high as soon as you leave." I mumbled randomly, trying to defuse the pressure, the awful tension.

Piper dropped her pack. Her hands, so dexterous and quick, grabbed my emaciated shoulders, and she held me close to her, lips just barely touching my neck. Her embrace was something I rarely fought against, though my arms almost always stayed at my sides. This time, however, my arms traveled up her back, clinging to her like the parasite she never saw me as. In the distance, aggressive birds called out their territories, the tar pits bubbled and steamed, the putrid airstreams rustled the forests, but all I distinctly heard was her uneasy breath against my ear. I had hurt her, _really _hurt her by sending her away. I was struck by this; of course I wasn't about the cave in and suddenly let her bum around just because she was in agony, but I could feel her anguish bleeding out of her body.

"In the pod, I dreamt about you."

I narrowed my eyes, perplexed, because sleep was blatantly dreamless in the pod, but I voiced nothing that my analytical brain proposed.

She drew back a little, only so she could look me dead in the face, but not letting go of me. "You're a killer, and a sinner."

Lips, brown and luscious, came closer to mine, white and dry. Contact, and I froze. So gentle, yet forbidden. So innocent, yet errant. To this day the language she was trying to convey through such a mystifying kiss is not clear.

She pulled away, and that distance between us was evil.

"And my heart is breaking."

_Your heart was already broken the moment you thought of me as your lover. _

Things would be better and more lucid when she was gone, I reassured myself. I disentangled from her grasp, and let her walk to her heliscooter.

I was suddenly watching a movie reel. She didn't cast me another glance, and started up the engine. The machine skidded down the runway and into the air, quickly becoming a diminishing dot in the blue sky blotched with clouds, some chaste white and others stormy gray. Something about her was more resolved. Kiros was now my unquestionable grave, and there I was, empty, accomplished, satisfied, and drained. When I could no longer see her or hear her engine in the expanse, I turned my attention towards the sack she had given me. I unwrapped the loose ties and saw my favorite pipe and herb stacked on something else. Betraying my arbitrary statement from before, I did not light up, but peered at the objects underneath. I turned to stone as I realized what they were. Two crystals, refined and purified to the fullest extent, glinted superbly even in the obscurity of the shade. A large vial of serum, several needles, syringes, and a large folded piece of parchment rested comfortably in the fabric of the sack. I had a fairly good idea of what all of this was, but I was too numbed by the discovery to completely comprehend it. I opened the note with shaky hands to find a short and pointed message written in Piper's elegant handwriting.

_Lark,_

_You didn't give me a choice whether to stay or leave,_

_nor did I initially give you the choice whether to live or die. For that I apologize. _

I glanced at the crystals, recognizing them as a paralyzer and an enhancer, two of the stones Piper was trying her hand at combining months ago. How she managed to finally make the experiment that failed a success was beyond me at the time. Back to the letter:

_I wrote down the formula in case you needed more than one dosage._

_It's your decision to take it or not. _

_- Piper_

I didn't know if I should have scowled, laughed hysterically, or cry. She had done it, just like she wordlessly told me she would. She found a way I could live forever, so to speak. Perhaps it was my natural arrogance that caused me to presume Piper hung on my every word and command, but she obviously didn't listen to me when I told her not to waste her time developing a cure, a savior from my once inevitable death. I looked out into the sky again; she was gone. Probably for good, but nothing was ever certain. After all, I practically tasted my demise on my starchy tongue, and then she left me with a chance to live. I shook my head side to side in disbelief, then retied the sack. I gripped my walking stick and began to stagger back into the mansion, with possible aspirations to put Piper's gift to good use. She _did _give me the choice whether or not to use it, after all.

Such a lovely girl. Ambitious and lethally focused, just like I used to be when I held the planet in the palm, Piper being the one and only pinprick in my calluses that kept me from smothering the entire Atmos with my hand. I wondered if she would go back to them, or if she would chisel away at this little and greatly unfair thing called life, carve out her own alcove in which she could be as obsessive and infatuated with her passions as she wanted.

For the longest time my life felt like a wicked hourglass, each grain of sand counting down to my final destination. Like sand, she slipped from my fingers as I had planned. And in her wake, she left a gift I couldn't decide whether or not to mock.


End file.
